Can pluralism be quantified?
by: Reb Arie on July 15th, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Note: The headline has been changed, some text has been removed, and a picture has been added since this article was originally published.
First of two parts
St Joseph's Oratory in the Snowdon-Cote-des-Neiges district of Montreal
I left Montreal not quite three years ago. And I was very happy to leave.
Montreal is not a pluralistic city. It is a frankly racist city. People are accustomed to it: they make excuses for egregious and blatantly racist assertions, which most often come from Quebec nationalists who complain about the “ethnic” vote (meaning either Jews or Italians, depending on the context).
The news was consumed in 2006 with the Bouchard-Taylor inquiry, formed by the provinicial government to report on race relations in Quebec. This would be a sensitive topic anywhere. In Quebec it was explosive.
Here is one example of how otherwise rational Quebecers consider minorities. Feel free to exchange the word “Jew” for the minority of your choice, depending on where you live in Quebec. The Bouchard-Taylor inquiry was bombarded with presentations that all basically asserted “Why can’t they be like us?”
Then the Town of Herouxville stuck its civic foot in its out-sized mouth:
6. CONCLUSION
Adding to the subject, we include in this report a document entitled “Way of life in Québec”, describing themorals, manners and customs of Quebec. This document strongly affirms the identity that one must seek when wishing to become part of the “Québecois” Nation. More so, we wish to manifest loud and clear that the values that forged the “Québecois” Nation over the last centuries must remain intact, as they constitute the unique francophone presence on the North-American continent.
The full text (in fractured but comprehensible English)
This all began with the use of a hijab by a 12 year old girl who simply wanted to play soccer.
No, the competition organiser said. Head scarves are prohibited. Any number of institutional reasons were given, mainly absurd ones — especially when it came out that other, similar competitions elsewhere do permit hijabs.
The use of customary clothing is far removed from the western mind, which needs to assign a category (traditional”) to it. I have worn the customary clothing of Hasidic Judaism during weekdays, though I now do so only on Shabbat (the Sabbath) and Holy Days.
I stopped weekday use merely because the clothes I have really are formal wear and are rather heavy. The opportunity has not occurred for me to obtain a rekel but when it does I will gladly switch from Docks and Chaps.
Hasidic Jew wearing a rekel
My choice to be different is conditioned by my choice to be observant, and by the continuum of observance my choice to be observant includes. I was not raised in an observant family. Even fervently observant Jews do not necessarily dress outside the norm, but I make the choice to do so. It imposes a discipline on me that is otherwise unattainable.
This is the dignity of difference, to borrow the eloquent phrase of Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom.
A Sikh RCMP officer wears his turban on duty in this country. This was not without controversy. The dignity of difference is part of Canada’s social fabric outside Quebec, imposed by the framework of multiculturalism that is a legacy of 80 years of Liberal governments in Canada, a nation barely 145 years old.
RCMP Officer Baljit Dhillon in Dress Uniform
Tomorrow I will explore how to make the dignity of difference manifest in a rapidly changing, globalised world.
[Montreal] is a frankly racist city. People are accustomed to it: they make excuses for egregious and blatantly racist assertions, which most often come from Quebec nationalists who complain about the “ethnic” vote (meaning either Jews or Italians, depending on the context).
Montreal is a city. Some of the people who live there are racist, and some are not; some of those who are racist are Québec nationalists and some are not. Having grown up there, I wince a half century later to think of the racism that was common currency in my childhood among my English friends and me about the French.
Herouxville is one town, and the point of view it represented was explicitly rejected by the commission, which seems a positive sign to me. ( Bouchard said “we have a duty to make sure all immigrants become as integrated as possible in our society, that they share our fundamental values, and the way to do that, sometimes, is to perhaps grant them an accommodation, to make their life easier.”)
A dear friend once suggested that rather than writing about “them and us”, and why “they” are racist (sexist, hate freedom, etc), it is a useful exercise to write about how some of us are racist. Let us draw inclusive rather than exclusive circles.
You have raised some valid issues, Peter, some of which are for inclusion in tomorrow’s article because otherwise there would have been more than 1000 words in today’s post.
Let me say this: Racism and bigotry is part of the general discourse in Montreal and throughout Quebec. Jewish day schools do not get fire-bombed in other Canadian or American cities — they get tagged with graffiti. Orthodox Jews do not get pushed in front of subway trains. Municipal councillors like Celine Forget do not get praised other than by narrow constituencies or charged with assault by a Hasidic Jew. Ambulance attendants do not win human rights complaints when a Jewish hospital asks him to eat his non-kosher meal in another part of the hospital that accommodates treif food.